ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a self-organizing model of auditory cortex that incorporates biologically plausible neural mechanisms for reorganization. It examines the behavior of a computational model of cortical reorganization to patterns generated by a computational model of a notch-lesioned cochlea. A computational model of the auditory periphery drives the development of the self–organizing cortical model via exposure to a range of pure-tone frequencies. D. Robertson and D. R. F. Irvine demonstrated reorganization in primary auditory cortex in response to partial cochlear lesions that is similar in nature to that observed in somatosensory cortex. Computational neural network models that abstractly express these mechanisms have demonstrated how global topographic order can emerge, in principle, from local cooperative and competitive interactions within a cortical structure. Many of these models have focused on problems of vision, beginning with the work of von der Malsburg on the development of orientation selectivity in visual cortex.
